


the veins grow in slow

by peachis



Category: Sharp Objects (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood, Body Horror, Drugged Sex, F/F, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Incest, Non-Consensual Kissing, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Rape/Non-con Elements, Scars, Unhealthy Relationships is an understatement, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Fisting, canon-typical warnings apply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:14:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24945190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachis/pseuds/peachis
Summary: When the first bloom came, Amma wasn’t surprised. Sickness and love had been bedfellows her whole life, so closely entwined that it was difficult to tell the two apart.
Relationships: Amma Crellin/Camille Preaker
Comments: 10
Kudos: 55
Collections: Nonconathon 2020





	the veins grow in slow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlingargents](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/gifts).



Once, when she was smaller, Amma had fit her whole hand inside Marian’s urn.

She’d waited until the house was quiet, music echoing up the stairs from the drawing room, ice clinking against crystal on the veranda, then she slipped out of her bedroom and crept along the landing. She stepped close to the walls, avoiding the boards that creaked. Past Marian’s room, the shrine, untouched. Past her mother’s bathroom with its mausoleum floor.

Marian took pride of place on the hall table, sitting solemnly where no one could miss her. Amma lifted her down carefully and settled them both on the floor, Marian cradled in her lap. The fluted neck of the urn was narrow, but Amma had skinny wrists and determination on her side.

She wanted to touch her, this sister Amma had never known. She needed to know that Marian had existed as something more than a memory, more than the shade of a girl who dogged her steps and stood invisible at her side every time Adora looked at her.

But, when she managed it, all that was inside was dust. Amma felt cheated, she’d expected something more. Something visceral. She sifted what remained of Marian between her fingers, grey and gritty, and touched the tip of one to her tongue.

Amma wished she could reach inside of Camille as easily. Part the ivory rungs of her ribs, climb up inside her, and wrap a hand around her heart. Not to harm, just to feel the pulse of it, life, blood, pumping through her veins.

After she found the teeth, Camille started drinking again.

Amma didn’t mind it much. She understood how it could feel good to give in. How when you want something, when you really want it, when you need it, nothing compares to that moment when it's finally yours. Sometimes, she imagined Camille was grateful for the excuse. A reason to let go, to stop pretending.

At first, Amma had been sure that Camille would turn her in. She’d waited for the call, the cops, the tearful confrontations. But Camille didn’t. She couldn’t. And Amma knew then. She _knew_.

Everyone has a person. Adora had Marian. Amma had Camille.

_Soulmates._

So, Camille drank, and she stared at her phone, and she locked herself in the bathroom when Amma tried to speak to her. Amma went to the store for painkillers and juice, she learned to pick the lock on the bathroom door and helped Camille wash spilled liquor out of her sweat-stiffened hair, took the nail scissors out of her hand and put them back on the shelf, tucked blankets over her when she passed out on the couch.

She knew that, eventually, Camille would understand her the way Amma understood Camille. She thought that, probably, Camille already did, but she hadn’t accepted what it meant yet. That they were broken in the same places, that Amma had just learned to live with it differently.

 _The body collects,_ Mama used to say. Every injury, every cruel word, every wicked deed. Camille wore her hurt on the outside, Amma’s grew inside her like weeds.

When the first bloom came, Amma wasn’t surprised. Sickness and love had been bedfellows her whole life, so closely entwined that it was difficult to tell the two apart. For all their differences, she and Camille were cut to the same pattern, from the same cloth. So when the flowers unfurled inside her chest, Amma never, not even for a second, dreamed of ripping those roots out. Why would she kill something that grew inside her, out of love?

That’s what Adora did, and Amma’s nothing like her mother.

Another sticky Missourian night, Camille with vodka on her breath and her back turned to the world. Amma helped her to the couch and stroked her cheek until her hand was smacked away.

Camille was a sweetheart when she was drunk, mostly. She didn’t yell or throw things or turn on Amma. Sometimes she cried. Usually, she put in those fucking headphones and tuned out everything but the music. Amma hated Camille a little bit when she did that. It was so pointed. So mean. It reminded her of Alan.

The St. Louis apartment was small. When she’d first brought Amma home, Camille had promised they’d find something better, eventually, but Amma liked the intimacy of it. Sharing space with Camille so casually, learning her habits, seeing her first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

In Wind Gap, the headboard of Amma’s bed butted up against the conjoining wall of Marian’s bedroom. Sometimes, laying there, feverish and shivering, Amma imagined her ghost whispering to her through the faded floral paper. Camille’s old room was never as closely guarded as Marian’s. Adora wouldn’t have known if Amma ever snuck in there, and so she did. She went looking for secrets, hidden and forgotten. For vestiges of the girl who got away. She’d learned to touch herself under Camille’s sheets, the fan whirling over her head to muffle the moans she couldn’t catch in the palm of her hand as she stroked between her thighs to jumbled thoughts of violent things.

Amma had always slept better in Camille’s bed than her own.

The bedsheets were cool when Amma slipped beneath them. She was angry, but anger was useless here. It was a hard-learned lesson, that Camille wouldn’t respond to her tantrums, didn't care to soothe her through rages. Not anymore. She just closed down, shut Amma out.

As she lay there, Amma wished they could always be like they’d been that night in Wind Gap. The town laid out like a playground at their feet, all the stupid, blind townies bumbling about their tiny lives, and she and Camille flying above them like Furies, the only two people in the world who mattered, halves of a whole, capable of anything.

Camille had loved her that night, Amma was sure of it.

The distance between them was a tangible ache in Amma’s chest, it tightened her throat, choked her breath and prickled behind her eyes. Camille had loved her, had accepted her, only to turn around and reject her. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t _right_.

For the first time in a long while, Amma missed her mama. Adora’s love was far from unconditional, but the terms at least were clear and understood. Camille kept her at arm’s length, even before the dollhouse. Amma reached out first, every time, and every time, Camille flinched before she let herself be held. Adora used to clutch Amma to her chest, stroke her hair, rock her to sleep. Amma wanted that from Camille, that tenderness, that closeness. The longing built in her until she thought she couldn’t breathe with it, and then she really couldn’t.

Amma had aspirated liquid once when Adora tilted the cup she was sipping from too far and didn’t stop pouring. She remembered that moment now, the panic, the sensation of drowning on dry land.

This was like that, but worse. Amma gagged, coughed, flailed a desperate hand at the nightstand for the glass of water that Camille had stopped bringing her weeks ago. She tucked herself into bed these days. Amma coughed again, harder, and something moved, deep in her throat.

To some degree or another, Amma’s body had always felt like alien territory to her; a grand expanse she had little control over. Illness, sickness, these things were visited upon her from a young age and it had taken a while to understand the rhyme and reason of it. The human body was a fragile and hunted thing, she knew that.

Amma had watched girls choke to death before.

When the scratchy, wet clot in her throat blocked her airways completely, when lights began to spark behind her eyes, a desperate fear she hadn’t thought she’d ever feel again zinged through every one of her nerves. She doubled over, trachea working around the intrusion. It hurt, made her eyes ache and burn.

Amma felt spit drip from her chin, tinged pink with blood when she wiped it away. She retched, hard enough that tears spilled down her cheeks, and the mass finally slid onto her tongue. With trembling fingers she scraped it out of her mouth, turning to switch on the bedside lamp.

Bare feet on the floorboards, strands of hair sticking to the cold sweat on her forehead, Amma examined the thing in her hand. A sticky wad of pink, speckled with blood. When Amma split it apart she found bright yellow stamen, the base had a dark, sharp calyx which had scratched her raw on its way up.

Amma tipped the flower onto her night stand and went to get a glass of water. On the couch, Camille didn’t stir.

The next morning, Amma went to the library with the wilted blossom wrapped up in her pocket. Camille didn’t ask where she was going, just sipped her coffee and watched her leave with shadowed eyes. The horticulture section was quiet. Amma found the right shelves quickly and claimed a small table by the window. The bloom was crumpled, gummy pink and garish, and Amma set it down carefully beside her little stack of books.

It didn’t take long to figure out, and when she did, Amma laughed loud enough that the miserable little man behind the desk nearly threw her out. She had to saccharine sweet-talk him into letting her borrow the books she wanted. It was worth it though, to be able to brandish them in Camille’s face when she asked where Amma had been.

Over dinner, take out that Amma had picked up on her way home, family dinners with the Currys had also fallen by the wayside of late, Amma read aloud to her sister.

“Did you know there are nearly three hundred species of camellia flower? And thousands more hybrids.” She speared a piece of fusilli with her fork and gestured grandiosely. “It’s the state flower of Alabama, even though it’s not native to the south.”

Camille picked queasily at her own pasta and said, “There was a white one at the old house. Mama planted it the year I was born.”

Amma thought of the house she grew up in, a perpetual memorial wreathed in flowers. Breathing pollen instead of air. She remembered studying the respiratory system in biology class, how the bronchioles spread like a root system through the lungs.

“I don’t remember that.”

“It was Marian’s favourite. Adora tore it out after she died, to put in the rose bushes.”

Amma shut the book with a snap. “Some people think white camellias are lucky,” she said, swallowing against the tickle in her throat. “But in Japan, they’re funeral flowers.”

Pink for longing, the book said, red for passion, white for admiration, for perfection, for death.

Amma wondered: what counts as loving someone?

She had loved her mama, like any child loves a caregiver responsible for their safety, who dotes on them, spoils them, disciplines them and guides them. Mama claimed to love her back, but Adora’s love was toxic. Corrupted. It would bother Amma more, if she hadn’t of always known it.

Amma loved Camille, that much was self-evident. She had physical proof of her love, scratching inside her lungs, clawing its way up her throat. Whatever kind of love it was, it was real and true. The question was, could Camille love Amma the way she wanted it? Could she love her like Amma needed her to?

The flowers kept coming.

Sometimes a handful of pointed, waxy scales, sometimes whole blossoms that left Amma’s mouth coated with yellow dust. The worst ones were sharp-edged, each petal set in the sort of perfect spiralling symmetry that appeared fake, something that couldn’t possibly be natural. Some were softer, big ruffled blooms that clogged Amma’s throat. She liked the bicoloured type best, bright white stained with red, like a marble countertop streaked with viscera.

Camille caught her scrubbing blood out of a white blouse in the kitchen sink. It was pretty much a lost cause, nothing really gets dried in stains out once they’re set, but Amma liked the shirt, so she figured she’d try.

In the morning light, Amma could see just how exhausted and jaundiced Camille looked. It made her want to wrap her sister up in cotton wool; wrap herself around her, skin to skin, and take a long nap.

“Why are you lookin’ at me like that?” She asked, flicking pink bubbles from her fingertips playfully. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Amma rolled her eyes and turned back to the sink. “It’s mine. Not that you care.”

“I care about you,” Camille said. “You know that I do.”

“Guess I wouldn’t still be here if you didn’t.”

Camille turned away to open one of the cabinets beneath the sink. She pulled out a jug and Amma thought for a moment she was revealing a stash, but the bottle was translucent plastic with a white safety lid and only about a third full.

“Ammonia,” Camille said, setting it down beside the sink. “Nothing else works on bloodstains.”

It felt like a truce, almost, or a concession.

“Open a window if you’re going to use that stuff.” Camille plucked an empty glass from the drying rack and headed for the refrigerator. “And don’t mix it with bleach, unless you want to take us both out.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Amma said as Camille pulled a different half-empty bottle out of the icebox.

“No.” Camille paused in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder with a flash of teeth that could’ve been a smile or a snarl. “That’s not your style, is it?”

Amma was trying real hard to be the kind of person Camille could love, but she didn’t make it easy.

If she was a good girl, she thought, Camille would love her back. If Camille loved her, the flowers would curl back down inside where they’d come from, and Amma would be able to breathe again. But being good for Camille was harder than being good for Adora, even if at heart they both just wanted her sweet and submissive.

Being sick didn’t work on Camille. It had never not worked before. Amma coughed openly in front of Camille, tossed bloody Kleenex in the trash for her to find, spat petals on the kitchen table and left them there to rot. Amma’s throat was torn to ribbons, she sipped water that stung like acid and started skipping meals. Camille didn’t even notice. It made Amma mad. Made her want to take Camille by the shoulders and shake her, slap her face, hold her by the hair until she was forced to look at Amma.

When she killed, that was the most herself Amma had ever been. Now, all Camille saw when she looked at her was a parade of dead girls and the faintest impression of Amma, a shadow behind them. It made Amma wish Camille had never found the teeth in the first place. She'd just wanted to know what Camille would do, how she would react. She wanted to see Camille's face when she realised the truth of it all. Realised who Amma really was. Who she could be, if she let herself.

The flowers kept coming and Amma wondered if she’d die from it. She thought, if she did die, would Camille love her then?

Camille rarely let Amma close enough to touch her anymore.

Camille tried to build walls around herself with her drinking and her scars and her attitude, she thought that was the best way to keep people out. Thought that was what she wanted. Amma had never met anyone more hungry for a kind touch, for compassion, for love. She was a half-domesticated animal, expecting outstretched hands to hurt, not sure what to do when they didn’t.

Amma liked touching Camille. She liked when Camille let her do it, let her past those barriers, let her sneak inside the boundaries. She liked it even more when Camille started touching her back, wrapping her arms around her, stroking her hair, holding her hand. Camille’s touch felt real to Amma in a way no one else’s did. Camille’s touch felt safe. And now she’d taken that away.

It hurt Amma’s feelings.

Especially since Camille had been so desperate for it before that she’d let John Keene and that sweaty detective fuck her. Amma was better than them, she could be better for Camille. If that was what Camille wanted, someone to push her around, make her feel things, Amma could be that. If that was what Camille needed to feel loved, Amma would offer it, gladly.

When Amma kissed Camille it was mostly to see what she would do, if Camille would let her get away with it. And she had. Now, Amma thought about doing it again. She thought about Camille kissing her back, softly. She thought about Camille kissing her hard, hands in Amma’s hair, pressing her up against the wall in the kitchen, or down against the pillows of her bed.

Amma thought about it until petals fluttered in her throat with every breath she took. 

“How do you know if you love someone?”

Camille was dozing on the couch, her empty glass staining a wet condensation ring onto the coffee table. Her eyes fluttered open when Amma spoke but they were glazed with drink and she couldn’t seem to focus on Amma’s face.

“Hm?”

“If you love someone,” Amma said, scooting closer to the couch on her knees. She tucked a strand of Camille’s hair behind her ear. “How do you know it’s really love?”

Camille hummed and her eyes drifted shut. “You just, you know,” she said. “If you- if you’d do anything for them. Want to protect them, keep them safe.”

“Is that it?”

“S’complicated.” Camille smiled. Amma liked it when she was this kind of drunk. When she was warm and fond and forgot all the bad things that had happened. 

Camille protected her. She could have turned Amma in to the cops, could have abandoned her to prison and a life behind bars, but she hadn’t. She kept Amma safe. But that wasn’t enough, it couldn’t be, or Amma wouldn’t still feel the rattling wheeze of petals building in her lungs as she sat there looking at Camille's face.

Amma watched as Camille’s breathing evened out. Her lips were parted, one hand curled up near her cheek. She looked peaceful. 

Slowly, quietly, Amma reached out a finger and stroked the length of Camille’s nose. She didn’t stir.

Amma kissed her. It was an awkward angle, with Camille lying on her side and Amma on her knees above her. Amma kept it chaste at first, no more than she’d done before. Camille’s mouth was sharp with spirits, slack and unmoving under Amma’s. When she pulled back, Amma breathed in deep and felt a sharp pain in her sternum. She frowned.

Camille was still dead to the world. Amma kissed her again.

She kept her mouth open this time, took Camille’s lower lip between her own and licked a trace of whiskey away. Camille was so vulnerable in that moment, in made Amma shiver. She could do anything, could bite down and worry at flesh, could wrap a hand around Camille’s throat and squeeze. But she didn’t, Amma just kissed Camille again with one hand sneaking up to hold her jaw still, and slid her tongue into her mouth.

When Camille moved it startled Amma. She leaned into the kiss at first, then went still. When Amma pulled back, Camille’s eyes were open, bright and betrayed. She shoved Amma away and half fell, half stumbled off of the couch. Without a word, she headed straight for the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind her. Amma licked her lips and sighed. She hoped that might have been enough, but if it wasn’t, she could always try again.

It didn’t work.

Camille had looked at her strangely all the next day, her eyes wide and very white around the iris. Twice she’d started to ask Amma something but stopped before the words escaped. 

Amma just smiled at her each time, until eventually Camille had taken herself out for a walk to the liquor store. While she was gone, Amma had a coughing fit and ended up scrubbing blood out of the bathroom grout with an old toothbrush.

A kiss hadn’t worked, but Amma hadn’t expected a move straight out of a fairytale to save her. She was just going to have to try harder.

The flowers were growing faster. At first it had only been once every few days, petals in between, but now Amma was coughing up several in the space of only a few hours. She knew what it meant, and she understood what would happen if she did nothing about it. She thought it would be easy to slip into hopelessness, to assume that Camille would reject her. That she'd die from this. But Camille had loved Amma once. She could love her again, Amma would show her how.

In the kitchen, Amma mixed drinks.

Camille had started early and was drunk enough that when Amma passed her a glass brimming dark with bourbon she said nothing, just took a long swallow, ice shards clicking against her teeth.

When Amma joined her on the couch, Camille glanced briefly at her from behind a curtain of hair and said nothing. Amma had her own drink, pink and fizzy with bubbles. She slurped at it, obnoxiously loud in the quiet apartment with only the traffic passing outside breaking up the silence. Amma wanted to put on some music, but she didn’t want Camille to retreat from her again, so instead they sat quietly and drank.

Camille was dozing off by the time she was half way through her second glass of bourbon. When Amma brushed her cheekbone, she flinched awake and alert.

“Eyelash.” Amma smiled, showing her the tip of her finger where the pale lash balanced. “Make a wish.”

Camille just looked at her.

“Suit yourself.” Amma shrugged and blew the lash away. She took another sip of her drink and coughed into her hand when the bubbles stung her throat.

The sound stirred Camille from her stupor. She frowned at Amma and asked, “Are you getting sick?”

Rage flickered in Amma’s chest for a brief, red-tinged moment. She swallowed it down and felt petals rise against it.

“You don’t get to ask me that.” Amma tasted copper on her tongue. “What do you care if I’m sick, huh? Would it make you happy?”

“Amma,” Camille’s expression and voice were wounded. She reached a hand out towards Amma’s shoulder, but left it hovering in the air rather than settling there. “Of course not, why would you say that?”

“You can’t even bring yourself to touch me. You’ve barely looked at me for weeks, can’t stand to be in the same room as me. You hate me.”

“That’s not true.” Camille always looked so pretty right before she cried.

“You wish I’d die,” Amma said. “Everyone wishes I’d die. You’d all rather have Marian-”

When Camille slapped her, everything stood still. For a second Amma thought, _I could kill you,_ but the fear in Camille’s eye’s proved that she already knew it, and that was nearly enough.

“You might want things to be different,” Amma said, crushing a bloody petal between her teeth. “But you chose this, Camille. I’m all you’ve got.”

She picked Camille’s glass up from the coffee table and pressed it into her hand.

“Drink up.”

Amma had to carry Camille to her bed.

She'd put a little something extra in Camille's drink, just enough that should wouldn't run away again, keep her calm and docile. It had to be this way, she thought, settling Camille back against the sheets. Camille would be upset, but she'd understand eventually.

It was a fiddly task to get Camille’s clothes off when she was laying on her back, but Amma wanted her to be comfortable. Amma had taken hers off as well. It seemed only fair.

She stroked Camille’s hair away from her flushed cheeks and ran her fingers through it, easing out all the tangles until it shone against the pillow, silken and soft. Camille’s skin, by contrast, was a sea of raised lines ebbing and flowing like waves.

Under her fingers, Camille stirred. On her sternum, BLOSSOM glowed silver in the low light, like an omen.

“Amma,” when Camille mumbled her name like that it sounded like- “What are you doing?”

“Hush.” With the tip of one finger, Amma followed the sharp points of a capital H carved in curve beneath Camille’s breast. “Can you feel that?”

Scar tissue was different to regular skin, sometimes numb, sometimes hypersensitive. Just like Camille, Amma thought fondly, brushing her thumb back and forth over the embossed edges of TRAGIC, the arch of the C curling around her nipple.

Amma leaned in and traced the letter with her tongue. She wanted to memorise each and every scar, to build a map of Camille in her mind. Camille tasted of skin and sweat, with none of the bitter blood and perfume that Amma had grown used to. She sucked gently, teeth scraping only a little, and Camille’s hand landed in her hair.

“Amma, don’t.”

BURN beneath Amma’s left hand where it rested on Camille’s ribs. SPITEFUL beneath her clavicle when Amma looked up at her, still mouthing at her breast.

“Does it feel good?” she asked, setting the point of her chin on Camille’s sternum. She pressed an open mouthed kiss over DOSAGE, trailed her lips open and wet down over SALT, tongue flicking against the F of FUCK low on Camille’s belly, grinning against her skin when the muscles there twitched.

“Stop it,” Camille slurred. “Amma, stop.”

Scars rubbed against Amma’s bare skin, she pressed herself close to feel the tantalising drag of it. Amma hooked her fingers in Camille’s underwear and drew them off slowly down her legs.

She had fooled around with girls a few times back in Wind Gap. Never Jodes or Kelsey, always the girls who wouldn’t tell. The memory of pushing Natalie down on the carriage house carpet and riding her face ’til she learned to do it right had seen Amma through a lot of nights before Camille came back to town.

“Camille.” The only word Amma would ever want to wear on her skin. “You’re so wet,” Amma breathed, running reverent fingers along the crux of Camille’s thighs.

Camille jerked beneath her hands, she tried to press her thighs together, to hide, but Amma wouldn’t let her. Arousal gleamed on Camille’s cunt and Amma kissed it away, licking her lips to catch the full salty-sweetness of it.

“Dirty girl, I knew you’d like this.”

Above her, Camille made a desperate sound and fumbled at Amma’s hair.

“Don’t-”

Amma caught hold of her wrist and pressed it gently but firmly to the mattress. “It’s alright.” She leaned in close and licked into Camille’s cunt.

When Amma touched herself, she liked it a little rough, on the edge of too-much right from the start. She always waited until she was burning up, so it only took a few moments of grinding down on her fingers before she came. Camille was softer than Amma, and it made Amma wanted to be sweet to her. To treat her nice. Camille deserved nice things, and Amma deserved to be the one to give them to her.

_I could eat you up._

Camille’s thighs trembled in Amma’s grip. She nudged Camille’s clit teasingly with her nose and smiled at the choked-off sound Camille couldn’t quite suppress. Amma sucked on Camille’s labia, dipped her tongue inside her and hummed, pleased, when Camille pressed back against her mouth. She moved back up to Camille’s clit and sucked on it gently, working her tongue in careful circles.

One hand tracing unseen ridges and runes of letters on Camille’s thigh, Amma rubbed two fingers over the smooth untouched skin of Camille’s slick cunt. She slid them inside and Camille gasped. When Amma glanced up at her, Camille had a white-knuckle grip on the pillow under her head, her other arm slung over her eyes, lips parted, red and hungry.

Amma fucked her slow and thorough. Camille’s breathing hitched every time Amma lapped at her clit and she sobbed aloud when Amma slipped a third finger inside her. She was so wet it dripped from Amma’s chin, the sound of it was obscene in the quiet room.

“Think you can take four?” Amma felt drunk with lust and love and power. Camille’s cheeks shone with tears when she shook her head, beyond speech.

It didn’t take much to slide her pinky finger inside Camille. Amma crooked her fingers and sped her thrusts until Camille was shaking with it, heels scrabbling against the sheets, one hand pushing at Amma’s face and the other a clenched fist between her teeth.

“I wanna put my hand in you,” Amma said, and closed her teeth every so gently over Camille’s clit.

Camille froze, rigid, then shook to pieces under Amma’s mouth. Amma didn’t stop, she turned her wrist and edged in a little further.

“Amma, please-”

Amma’s hands were small and she had always been determined. When she finally slipped inside of Camille, there was nothing Pyrrhic about it. Camille held her, tight and warm and safe, as close to wrapping her fingers around the heart of her as Amma would get.

Camille’s chest rose and fell in short, fluttery bursts. She had her face turned towards the ceiling, mouth slack and panting. When Amma flexed inside her, she made a small, desperate sound and let her eyes drift shut.

Amma’s own heart was in her throat. Slowly she moved, watching the sharp bone of her wrist slip in and out of Camille’s pretty pink cunt. She leaned in and licked where they were joined, wrapped an arm around Camille’s thigh and urged it over he shoulder so she could wriggle in close and press the flat of her tongue over Camille’s clit.

She could’ve stayed like that for hours, but it was likely only minutes before Camille tensed around her, full body shuddering, so tight around Amma’s wrist that it almost hurt. Amma felt a reflection of Camille’s pleasure echo through her, the strength of it so much more affecting like this, inside of her. She didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to leave. She wanted to climb inside Camille and stay there, and she might have tried it, if she hadn’t been so wet that it was pooling stickily beneath her on the sheets.

Carefully, Amma slid her hand free and licked her fingers clean. Camille was so pretty like this, Amma couldn’t resist the temptation to clean her up too, smiling against Camille’s clit when she jerked away, oversensitive and sore.

Amma moved up the bed, settling with her head on Camille’s chest, and pressed her hot cunt against the curve of Camille’s hip, NASTY cut deep and scarred-up enough that Amma felt it when she rubbed herself against Camille’s skin. She clutched at Camille’s ribs, rocked her hips, smearing lazy open-mouthed kisses against Camille’s breasts. It was almost enough.

“I need you,” Amma whined, catching hold of Camille’s hand where it lay on the bed like something discarded. “C’mon, Camille. Touch me.”

Amma slid Camille’s fingers between her thighs, curved them with her own and pressed them inside where she was aching and empty. She clenched down and rolled her hips and bit down hard enough to break skin when she came.

Amma woke choking.

Camille lay with her back turned, hunched in on herself under the sheets. She didn’t move when Amma sat up, clawing silently at her throat.

Amma gagged, eyes blurring with unshed tears. She coughed, breathing tiny gasps of air through her nose, and the bloom slid further out of her throat and onto her tongue. When she grasped at the head of it, slimy with blood and spit, it didn’t move. Amma pulled and nearly screamed as something moved lower down, deep in her chest. It hurt, it pulled and tugged and scraped tender flesh that should never be felt.

She jumped when cold hands touched her cheeks, tilting her face towards the faint light shining through the window.

Camille was gray-faced and wide-eyed. “What is this, what-”

Amma caught hold of the head of the flower with shaky fingers and painstakingly drew it out past her teeth until Camille could see. It was attached, her throat worked frantically around something that had to be stems.

 _Help me,_ she tried to tell Camille, but the sounds that left her mouth were meaningless.

Camille’s fingers closed around Amma’s, clumsy with shock, slipping when she tried to grasp the head of the flower. She reached deeper into Amma’s mouth, knuckles bumping her teeth, and Amma caught hold of her wrist and held tight when Camille began to pull.

There was a flower and then there was a stem and another flower and a bud that caught at the back of Amma’s throat and made her retch, and Camille pulled, she pulled and slowly the whole mass came out in her hands, roots and all.

Amma heaved deep, pained breaths that opened her lungs all the way up for the first time in weeks. It hurt, she was still spitting blood, but she was alive. She was alive and Camille was straddling her lap, gloriously naked, blood splattered on her cheek and painted across her chest, dripping from her fingers which shook around a whole branch of camellia blossoms.

Amma sat up and threw her arms around Camille. “You saved me,” she whispered, bloody lips pressed against Camille’s damp cheek.

Camille held her close and stroked her hair and didn’t say a word.


End file.
